Sasa Milivojev

'Saša Milivojev transforms his affinity for different forms of artistic expression into verses with skilful precision, amazing us with his musicality, picturesqueness, and the multiple meanings of each chosen word. The modern expression and structural complexity of his verses make him one of the most gifted poets...'

'Of all artists, I have always loved poets the most, not because they have dedicated their poems to me, but because a poet is an intermediary between God and people. The poetry of Saša Milivojev is very unusual; it extends through several dimensions and stimulates some new senses in the reader. He communicates with abstract worlds in which he finds his peace. Because of his unrequited love - a love he gives unconditionally, he runs away finding refuge in various religions. He communicates with the universe, nature, and people leaving, whom he sees through his 'dirty windows'. He communicates with fairies, Allah, and almighty gods who have bestowed upon him the gift of a lonesome healer. Nine/Evening/A bright speck soars/Darkness from the sky/The spinning of a wedding dance. I read once that a firefly is programmed by nature to shine at nine oclock in the evening only. Sašas poem depicts the spinning of a wedding dance and a multitude of those bright specks moving in the dark. To me, it looks like the eternal floating of celestial bodies.'

'I have been acting for so many years that I cannot even remember all the poems I have read on various poets' nights. I do not even remember when was the last time I had stage freight as I did at the promotion of the book by Saša Milivojev 'The Secret behind a Sigh'. It was primarily because of his very mature, serious and philosophical poetry, and on the other hand, I was not indifferent when I saw the audience - the Ethnographic Museum was full. No one would expect that a twenty-year-old Serbian poet could draw such attention from a Belgrade audience.'

'When I walk into a bookstore I do not look for books by famous authors who have already proved themselves in the belles-lettres. I usually pay attention to new names and books that have appeared quietly, without any pomp. All those books have different fates that are entwined with our lives. On the floor below a book shelf I saw a book with a cover of an angel writing verses in his own blood. I lifted the book, wiping the dust off it. The book was by a Saša Milivojev. I glanced through a couple of symbolic verses full of dramatic conflicts of the lyric subject and a dark picture of the world. It was enough for me to buy the book and take it home, hoping that I would find a ray of light in it, but I was disappointed with the lyrical exaggerations. However, when I turned the last page of the book, I realised that the author was very young and forgave him right away. More than two years later, he called me saying that he wanted me to hear his poems. He read a couple of poems that took my breath away. I saw a firefly that was gone and moved away from him like 'The light speck/And the shore remains deserted, ' the shore on which the young poet was carrying the light in his hands and had the role of a healer.'

'He is unusually mature for his age; associational and deeply emotional He can soar into the heights, and descend carefully, when appropriate. Saša Milivojev is in love with poetry and beauty, unorthodox and uncatchable...'

'I have a feeling that I have already seen what Saša Milivojev wrote in his poems, and I am trying to convince myself that 'that has always slept deep inside me.'

When I first saw a photograph of Saša Milivojev in a newspaper, my lips spontaneously whispered: Tadzio! It was a reaction to his angelic beauty of the kind that once mesmerised me when I read Death in Venice as part of the preparation of a paper entitled The Novellas of Thomas Mann at the World Literature Department of the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. The Hellenic, Apollonian beauty of the young Pole that I recognised on his face, is often unaware of itself. It belongs to the kind so agonisingly loved by Thomas Mann, to those blue-eyed and simple creatures that need no spirit. It also conforms to Schiller's principle of the naïve, as opposed to the sentimental, which separates itself from life, contemplates, writes poems and falls while dancing. As I continue, I turn to Tonio Kröger, the novella in which Thomas Mann describes his poetics - i.e. his relationship with art - most picturesquely. The Tadzio of Saša Milivojev melts into the character of Hans Hansen, another of those blue-eyed boys that enjoy every moment, deeply emerged in life, favoured, fitting into the whole. Then I read the interview, a couple of columns and a few poems by this young man - still more of a boy than a man - and I realised that I had finally found an answer that remained lingering above my study paper: What would have happened if Hans Hansen had humoured Tonio Kröger and read Don Carlos? Now I know - he would have become Saša Milivojev. This beautiful, young, talented poet is actually a reincarnation of Kröger's biggest desire. He is a Hans Hansen who has read Don Carlos. Well-educated, ambitious, diligent, brimming with ideas, courageous and eloquent in his columns, vulnerable and frighteningly lonesome in his labyrinth, from which a small firefly, the carrier of divine light, will rescue him like Ariadne's thread. When the firefly is gone and darkness settles in, the embers will remain on the poet's hands like stardust or heavenly fire, empowering those hands to heal the wounds of this world by writing poetry and transmitting the healing energy into those who read it. In this 'Giant Boy', as the famous sculptor and poet Boris Staparac named Saša, The Naïve and the Sentimental have merged perfectly, as perfectly as yin and yang, water and fire, light and darkness. Behind this angelic blue-eyed Tadzio hides an uncompromising, brave and articulate columnist and writer of the novel about the Yellow House: 'I fall with the rain, courage is urging me to say to the people, NO' - and also a gentle, vulnerable poet who, free from the desire for commercial success, carries his firefly (an embodiment of his guiding star) and seeks from all the gods the answer of all answers: What is the meaning of our existence? 'Like haiku verses, the small, icy crystals of his poetry are condensed and reduced to the smallest number of words necessary to express the essence; slowly melting and dying in the heat of his dream of the desert, they lead us to endlessness, to the wandering stars, to the Fake Tears of the Moon, to questioning all the gods that preach about Love, gods who should finally become one, the all-seeing eye of the Universal Mind. Saša Milivojev has evolved into one of the most inventive poets in the world! Besides impressionist moments, such as the firefly leaving and parting the Light from Dark, his new book speaks of the emergence of the fifth ice age. His lyrical subject travels through time, living all the disasters of the Planet Earth, from volcanic eruptions: Who protects you / From the burning rain / Now that you are gone, and the Sun melting away, to continental plates moving, deluges, global warming, poles melting, to Waves crashing and Towns sinking; Black mountains are crumbling / The locusts hiss all round / Gnawed bones / Float soaked', and so on until the ultimate apocalypse and ice age. The collection entitled When the Firefly is Gone assumes prophetic proportions when pictures of drowning continents assail the reader's mind. Africa is the last to sink, the water level rising over the tips of the pyramids, after which An endless plate of ice will be created; a camel will carry the lyrical subject as the victor, not unlike the epic heroes of old Arabic literature, but this time the camel Stumbles over the tips of the pyramids … Finally, I would like to address Saša personally and give him my motherly support, as he is an encouraging young face of future Serbia, despite all the cowards, all the indifferent mediocrities, and all Soros's payees: I whish you all the best, my beautiful boy! You have a heavy burden to bear on your shoulders. I see that some have already started accusing you of manipulation and ambition, saying that, by choosing the topic for this book, you want to achieve instant success regardless of the risks the topic may bear. Hang in there, fight and move forward. Many will hate you for your beauty, but I can see the sign on your forehead, the one written in invisible ink. Work hard and your dream will come true. I bow before the hardships and suffering you will have to endure; I bow like Zosima the elder bowed before Mitya Karamazov. I am with you, my little Tadzio! THE SON OF THE SOUL In the wake of creation While I trod barefoot Over the seething stars My soul begot you My son. It lost you and sought you Writing your name in milk In the sand. Screaming like Lilith for her baby Speaking of you to God Amidst the desert. Through the mazes of cosmos And the shrieks of dying suns I descended into time To bring you back. Following the beat of computer bytes Under a sea of websites I found you. On a young body The mark on the forehead Revealed you. I will stay with you And accept mortality So I can follow you. Those who love I will protect Those who hate I will crush Those who touch you I will kill My son. Just whisper my name. Daliborka Stojšić

I had a chance to meet Saša Milivojev, a young poet, and to read his first book while it was still in the manuscript. He wanted to hear my opinion about his work, and I told him the following: 'No, I am not a judge, God forbid, God forbid.' I felt that there was something sincere in his poetry and asked him: 'Saša, what would you like to be in life, but tell me honestly? ' - We were at my place... He told me: 'I want to be a poet.' Oh, Mother of Crhist! I sat with my head buried in my hands... Hey! In Serbia! ? To be a poet in yesterdays and todays? I carefully listened to him reading... We cannot do anything else but support him. That would cost us nothing. We are all familiar with Miljković and his quote: 'Killed by Too Powerful a Word'. - He ended his life in a toilet in Zagreb, running away from Belgrade. I guess that we have had enough of killing poets in Serbia at the very beginning of their career. There is something in it; we have felt something. Let us never remove from the scene the poets, actors, artists, shoemakers, or anyone who has a heart and soul. Let all of them stay on their stage.

SAŠA MILIVOJEV THE EMIR OF THE CONTEMPORARY POETRY OF SERBIA ASIDE A BRITISH LIGHTHOUSE Scientific overview of the song - the poem THE PAIN OF THE WORLD. A prelude to the poetics of Saša Milivojev. Penned by: THE NATIONAL PEST. Translated into English by: Ljubica Yentl Tinska THE EMIR AND THE TEMPEST At the pinnacle of the Winter that was according to the global administrative calendar divided between the years 2018 and 2019, Saša Milivojev conceived a poem named "The Pain of the World". Its title evoked memories not of Byron, yet of Shelley, and it is because of those memories that I rest these words of the Emir of the contemporary poetry of Serbia aside a British lighthouse. ID OF "THE PAIN OF THE WORLD" Served to the World, as a sizzling song, Saša Milivojev's poem to be, "The Pain of the World", clearly walked the content obsessed reader from Homer (has been or never was and whatever name bore he who recounted the atrocities of today) to Miloš (structurally, although it is known that Milivojev does not emulate) , Darwish (Milivojev is also displaced, relocated poet, kindred by the inclination towards the exhaustive, brutal yet highly lyrical - although it is certain that one has not read the other) , and Vasiljev (the reader being burdened by the textual legacy of the tongue in which Milivojev authentically sings) . Transcended to other tongues, fine-tuned to the rhythm of this World - not by what he addresses, rather by what those writings emit and by the inscribed - Balkan Soyinka, called Shoyinka upon a visit to Belgrade. How those who announced him, upon being awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature, pronounced his name, fails me. BRINGING MILK TO THE FORE Each man has his East, that is not necessarily one's Source. It is a blazing South, that one shelters from in the Summer, and seeks shelter upon when fogs descend below street lanterns and seawolves (those old poets, even romanticists, post-romanticists and neo-romanticists) percept the lighthouses sheltering the cottages in which boils the water that is never to become tea. Who would drink it without the milk? Yet why is there no milk? Why is there no milk? Those who perceive, consider and acknowledge themselves as Poets, not poets, scribblers or scribblemen are shouting out rather than asking. They are the ones - who have known from the very dawn of their perception that they were exceptional and this distinction they do not deny. They set it forth on their own accord, exhibit it and worship. They know how to capture the world and draw its attention to their extraordinary being. They are prompting the mankind to remember - that ambrosia, that implies immortality is of no significance, without that which nips mortality in the bud: It is not the air we live off, a new-born cannot survive on air only, without not ambrosia, not water, not wine, but milk, milk, milk. There have been and are but a few throughout the world who have been and are perspicacious, audacious and ready to voice this and Saša Milivojev is among them. THE TROUBLE WITH THE POET Saša Milivojev is a Poet. This is what he is by his perception and calling, followed by the self-awareness. One step ahead of the world, never turning back, boldly challenging the mankind and pointing his finger at whatever themes are eating mankind when he sings. Milivojev, therefore intentionally chooses what to sing and to whom. His is the song of everyman, however fundamentally addressed at men of power. How is this and why? The answer lies in revealing who will not drink tea without the milk, and is tea what the word is about: the weather, as well as the entire reality of the world is not a good enough reason or a fair-minded explanation, justification and finally a valid excuse for the milkmaid's son not having swapped around the empty bottles by the sailors front doors with the full. Is reality accountable (Ah, that son of the milkmaid!) for poets spinning in circles (waiting only for the vampirished „beloved deceased") , or is it the poet where the trouble is? Could this be why he is not a Poet after all? Yet Milivojev is. And how is that? MILIVOJEV KNOWS Milivojev knows that the one who fails to methodically perceive the past, and perceives as the past what is considered to be tradition, who selectively approaches the thesaurus of human experience, the legacy in itself and one's own native singing tongue, is not the selector of the motives, nor of the themes, yet rather the selector of reality. Milivojev also knows what reality is: it vitally is what it is now, whilst essentially being what it has always been, including the present. Milivojev knows, that it is not the fate of Troy, nor the Vietnam war (neither as the actual nor as the processed "reminders" of the entertainment world, preserved as means of implementation of the new epic consciousness) , yet it is the bleeding wounds, blown up body parts that are still warm and fresh corpses that count. Who is stumbling upon the limbs, whose body is reeking, whose fresh wounds are aching? Milivojev knows! CATALOGUE Milivojev knows and therefore addresses the mankind, pointing his finger to what a blind eye is turned. And it is with the gaze which is unmoving from the sight, that is more horrid than a nightmare, yet is our reality, that he reveals the culprit - not even having to name him. From infinity to eternity all the seawolves of the universe, all poets of the world, have intertwined their verses with Her - a goddess, a muse, the beloved (with her sparrow no less, as did Catullus, (if those were some other times, I wouldn't have to protect myself by mentioning the poet, because there wouldn't be a reader around who would not know that I am referring to The Death of Lesbias Sparrow)) , a mother, somebody's wife and (unvampirished) beloved deceased (we could say her name has been Lenore way back from romanticism until today when and if speaking of ballads and - the motive) , yet what is Milivojev doin­g? Saša Milivojev is not pointing his finger at the ever guilty "woman" in "The Pain of the World" (although in his mother tongue the country is motherland, as is in Serbian tongue the unnamed, mysterious power of either kind) , the woman is rather, as is the man, indivisible by sex and gender. She is there, she is present, as is the man, as a part of the cruel and unfortunate catalogue of our (not epic, yet real and empirically well shod) conscience. Our "Catalogue of Ships" however, accounts not for the ships and the ethnicities upon them, yet for corpses, corpses, corpses. TO THE SEVENTH HEAVEN IT'S HEARD Milivojev is the one who boldly and responsibly, with verses incisive and impenetrable, inscribes into the generic poem of the world and the universal human epos not tribes and mythical heroes - the future symbols of all and everything - yet human sufferers, human victims, humans who are children and the elderly, women and men that are on the other side of the lighthouse, where the capricious heirs of the fleets carrying tea decline, that there exist a different Other, the unbowed Other, free Other, who breathes and drinks, drinks, drinks milk. Have the Empires foregone (especially the colonial, emphasised so in the post-colonial discourse) remained unlearned by their own recent fiascos? Are they unable to see that the heirs of the nobleman who once tailored the borders of states do the same today to the detriment of their own possessions? Is Milivojev, who sings not of London brimming with British Indians, addressing this, however non explicitly yet explicitly singing, weeping, to the Seventh Heaven it's heard, about canyons brimming with the Afghans. As colonial seawolves, or shall I say romanticists would say, Milivojev sings „colonially without a doubt ", bestowing the world with the consequences, consequences, consequences. While the Empire (which is also in Milivojevs mother tongue of female gender) , remains silent. TRIANGLES AND THE APPLE JAM Let us go back to asking ourselves why is there no milk. Although, by experience if not by reason, the learned wife of a seawolf, a good standing grandmother with a few greys, believes and knows why her grandson, used not to tea, yet to pure milk, not as hot as rather scalding, with four triangles of bread joined with apple jam, does not accept a single because. He is entitled to his mug of milk and will not accept shoddy breakfast, partially fulfilled role of the ancestors to nurture and feed him. And what of the upbringing? Saša Milivojev has no illusions and is not afraid to say it as it is: the grandson of the seawolf does not want to be cultivated, rather to cultivate. He brings fear to the wind, and the cow and his own inmates - seldom sweetly, often fiercely, driving out the force as far away from home, yet the further it is, the greater it becomes. Carpets of bombs, salvos of missiles, kilotons of radioactive humanitarian food and fattening of the mankind with lies and misconceptions, it is what even a non-poet can see, yet only a Poet can, may and dares to perceive - loudly and clearly. MUTATION Cultivation and education impose boundaries on freedom to accept but a single fact. However, socialisation does not necessarily lead to finding understanding within the society, the nature and amalgamation of the two. It does not lead to accepting the culture, not even to walking in step with civilisation yet it does not alter them either. „The Pain of the World" is Milivojev's warning to the world: The progeny is more likely to seek the existing culture and civilisation he is best suited to, and remain as its part for as long as and while it is so, then proceeding further and beyond - never to the South, always to the East, from West even. He leaves the South for the Ancestors - to warm their freezing bones and seek shelter from what they were unable to change. And it is the Winter they were unable to change, to rearrange, relocate to malarious regions. They have relocated, not temporarily it appears, merely certain people unworthy of changing and many, many customs and habits. One of them is - killing. Still, have the seawolves evolved at the least? The progeny of the seawolves are no longer changing the world and freeing captured kings. Byron, even if he was to be born again, would not be standing side with the Greeks against the Turks, he would rather be assisting the Turks in establishing the romanticised order (in changing the Arabic with the Latin alphabet on the tables, so that „everybody would be able to read them") . HE Non-methodical revelation of the world, immediate riposte to the pain of man, to the very physical pain, unburdened by the literature and birthright, is the ubiquitous, pain of the world. The concept has therefore, complemented the content altering its scope. There is no violent death that is painless not even when it is unheard, brought not by machine guns, canons and other countless weapons including the cold. Truth be told, reading Saša's, rather than some Germanic „Weltschmerz", one wonders whether chemical weapons are equivalent to white arms. There are no Romanticists left, without a prefix, in either Germany nor Britain, and neither are born there either. They are yet to come, but they must first be born. Their poetic and poethological ancestor has set foot on his chosen East a long time ago, reaching it from Byron's South and Shelley's East. He knows that the Epos is thisworldly because of reality that is its fundamental component, as much as he knows that reality is more than something to sing about or, in terms of this century, cry about. He knows, he sings, and his name is Saša Milivojev. The National Pest

WHEN THE FIREFLY IS GONE YOUTH GRAPPLED IN FEROCIOUS CLINCH An underground Critic by Milan B. Popović (poet, journalist) Source: BLIC NEWSPAPERS,18.4.2010 WHEN THE FIREFLY IS GONE is a book, significantly and distinctively diverging from the contest of domestic and even regional — Balkan, literary publications by being written in three languages: in Serbian, English and Arabic. WHO IS THE POET, DE FACTO? Saša Milivojev, acts from the shadow, from some kind of poet's sanctum and a kind of bunker. He is, on some part, boyishly incorrupt and supremely regally aestheticized. On the other side of this reflexive quill, he is livid, valiant, trenchant and semantically extreme. At times it may seem that his poetry bleeds into a kiss, at times it bites vividly sinking its teeth. The lyrical subject of this book is thoughtful, sacred, non-obscure and almost amply religious. He jumps off the rails of the ingrained faith, even of religion, onto an entirely new ones, disparate, but no less acknowledged. The lyrical subject finds itself in a certain spiritual but also entirely metaphysical intersection. At times he weeps, at times he pleas, sometimes he gives in, sometimes he gives up. He searches for himself. Nevertheless, he plunges into the most profound membranes of the pneuma piercing through all auras, velums, and even chakras. If I was to travel to Cairo, Dubai, London, to all and every other destination in the world, I would surely take the book with me. I would even admonish the local, domestic men of the pen to leaf through it and peruse. To see and perceive what they have, due to the countless chores, toil and unread and accumulated material — overlooked, and are unknowingly or deliberately, intentionally or unintentionally culpable towards. To hear and finally discern the aching cry of the intellect, virtuosity and youth grappled in ferocious clinch of so-called life in this vicious altruists' age of ours. So how does one conclude? Not so far ago, on an unbelievably and exceptionally well attended promotion of the book When the Firefly is Gone in the Ethnographic Museum, the attending devotees of a poetical word, were able to cognise and encounter, silently and with great appreciation, the energy of Saša's rhymical tear-offs that even the actress Ivana Žigon wasn't unsusceptible to. They all knew how, your signatory included, to interpret and feel them. And how about you? Translated by Ljubica Yentl Tinska